Morning Briefing
Summaries of health policy coverage from major news organizations
Trump Tempers Promises Of Replacement Health Plan From GOP, Saying Any Votes Can Wait Until After 2020
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he was willing to wait until after the 2020 presidential election to get Congress to vote on a new healthcare plan, giving Republicans time to develop a proposal to replace Obamacare. Congressional Republicans have been unable thus far to draft a proposal to replace Democratic President Barack Obama's signature Affordable Care Act despite frequent vows to do so in recent years. (4/1)
Trump claimed that the as-yet-unseen Republican proposal 鈥渨ill be truly great HealthCare that will work for America,鈥 writing online that 鈥淩epublicans will always support Pre-Existing Conditions.鈥 The unexpected string of tweets added new drama to a week that has seen Obamacare return to the fore as a policy issue. (Forgey and Bresnahan, 4/1)
The Trump administration last week's began a new push to invalidate former President Obama's signature health care law when the Justice Department argued in a new court filing that the entire law should be ruled unconstitutional. White House aides have indicated that the administration is working on replacement legislation to submit to Congress sometime this year. (Cohn, 4/1)
Most congressional Republicans, however, are in no mood to return to the battlefield. Although they had fiercely opposed the law since 2010, it gradually became more popular with voters and was considered a chief factor in last November鈥檚 Democratic victories that cost the GOP control of the House of Representatives. In the House elections, health care ranked as the top issue for voters. Those voters preferred Democratic candidates by a striking margin of 75 percent to 23 percent, according to exit polls published by CNN. Democrats won 40 seats and captured the majority after eight years. (Kapur and Harney, 4/2)
Mulvaney, defending President Trump鈥檚 revived push to replace the Affordable Care Act, made several inaccurate statements about health care when he made the rounds of the Sunday-morning talk shows. But we are going to focus on this one because it involves numbers and allows for a relatively straightforward fact check. Mulvaney made a simple comparison: He said more people paid a fine for not having health insurance than people who gained from the ACA, a.k.a. Obamacare. So how do the numbers stack up? (Kessler, 4/2)
